


Exquisite Corpse

by dirtyretro



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Blood and Gore, Cyberpunk, Dystopia, Gun Violence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Monsta X Bingo, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2018-12-15 01:27:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11795574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtyretro/pseuds/dirtyretro
Summary: Hyungwon owns a cyborg repair clinic in the post-war outskirts of Neo Seoul. Life is alright, especially with his cybernetically-enhanced best friend Kihyun.One day at breakfast, news of a deadly virus infecting cybernetic-kind shakes them to their core.





	1. Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Krimmro](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krimmro/gifts).



_“We are not the stuff that abides, but patterns_  
 _that perpetuate themselves.”  
_ ―Norbert Wiener

+

 

“What do the stars look like without light pollution?”

“Stars?”

“Yeah, stars.”

The sun sunk slowly in the sky, bathing the apple of Kihyun’s cheek in warm light. “I don’t understand.”

“I read about them once. Shiny balls of plasma held together by their own gravity. Apparently, before everything, the night sky was dark enough to see them. Books said they were beautiful,” Hyungwon explained as he stared up into the blank void of sky.

Together, they watched the sun die into the horizon as they sat atop the rusty, tin roof of Hyungwon’s cyber repair clinic. A shade of red too light to be crimson, with occasional streaks of tangerine and brown, stained the atmosphere like noxious blood. Nowadays, the sunset was nothing but a sobering reminder of the past. ‘Course, neither Kihyun nor Hyungwon were alive in _that_ past.

Kihyun, silent, digested each word in small doses. Then, he too glanced up. “They were up there?”

“Yeah. Still are.”

“Still?”

“I mean, things like that can’t just go away, right?” Hyungwon rationalized, hugging his knees to his chest.

Kihyun shrugged, staring blankly, poised with an air of indifference. “A lot of things go away.”

“I suppose.” Most days, Hyungwon didn’t think it necessary to debate. He preferred not to acknowledge the truth. Embracing ignorance made life easier to cope with.

“Where’d you find books?” Kihyun asked. Books, as far as he knew, perished when raiders incinerated pre-war libraries and historical records after the Decade of Cyberwar. The government urged society to forget their existence, and if he learned anything from his twenty-three years of life, it was to obey the government.

Hyungwon chose not to answer, so they sat atop the roof until the red sky rotted into starless black.

 

 

The Decade of Cyberwar ravaged the globe, leaving it barren and cratered from nuclear bombs and war. Once highly coveted as innovative, advanced cybernetics washed over the earth like a technological tsunami, bringing with it promises of improved human life. The scientists who perfected the formula, so to speak, won countless awards for their revolutionary contribution to humankind.

Robots and droids, insentient hunks of metal programmed with a singular function, were made useful in science and industry. The launch of companion bots, referred to as androids, were startlingly human-like robots that looked, spoke, and _felt_ human. Medical breakthroughs saw robotic prosthetic limbs as a second chance for disabled persons. These enhanced people were colloquially referred to as cyborgs. Increasing social resistance to these people established a prejudice that provoked cyborgs to reject the title. Uproar simmered down as years passed.

By far the greatest accomplishment from the field of cybernetics were micromachines, known commonly as nanites. Nanites, unseen by the naked eye, were groundbreaking in their amazing ability to detect negative energies and weaknesses in organic materials. Infectious and chronic diseases alike were eradicated; famine was destroyed as soil was made fertile and crops grew aplenty; air and water pollution was purified, stabilized, and maintained. Nanites reformed the world and gave humankind the chance to start anew.

Shortly thereafter, corporations placed stock in the nanite industry. Soon, a game of politics uprooted the scientific integrity of the purpose of nanites. Business, greed, and ego inflated cybernetic technologies, where scientists and engineers were paid handsomely to alter the good intentions of nanites. Cybernetics rotted from the inside out, spewing rancid bile upon society as a sobering reminder of the dark underbelly of humanity.

Through corruption, the floodgates of cybernetic capability burst. The introduction of cybernetics sullied warfare strategies, where corporations paid countries to enlist military bots enhanced with heavy weapons and specialized artillery to replace human soldiers. Equipped, too, with artificial intelligence, military bots rapidly adapted to battle, constantly analyzing and exploiting weaknesses in the enemy. Bots created to seek and destroy lacked morality. Innocent human lives were claimed, written off as unfortunate collateral damage by corporate men in expensive suits tucked safely away from war zones.

Horrifically, cyborgs enhanced with prosthetic limbs exploded in cities across the globe. Agents of cyberware implanted computer-controlled explosives in the plastic lining of prosthetic limbs. Distribution was quick and widespread due to suspiciously affordable prices in later-revealed black market sales. Unfortunate collateral damage, as the corporate men said, became commonplace.

Eventually, privileged nations employed hackers who skillfully infiltrated the artificial intelligence of military bots. Hacked bots were ruthless, barbaric murderers. And eventually, as was the natural progression of warfare and technology, hackers penetrated high security and hijacked control of weapons of mass destruction. Perhaps it was lack of self-awareness, or perhaps a lack of remorse for humankind, but the Decade of Cyberwar ended at 0900 hours the night the world's largest nuke set the hemispheres alight in blinding, cataclysmic ruin.

Things stayed that way, too. Ruined. Most of the population, whether man or machine, perished in glorious light. Lingering nuclear energy seeped into every untouched crevice, corroding anything that managed to survive. Plants, flowers, food—gone; families, friends, enemies—gone. Absolute devastation. The few who remained, the paranoid folk mocked by society for Doomsday preparation, emerged from their underground bunkers alive.

The chance to start fresh always began with the best of intentions, but humans were awfully great at corrupting themselves in the name of self-preservation. The new world was no different than the old. Instead of wood and fire, postmodern people had metal and nuclear energy.

And they used it to oppress. To spread anti-cybernetic propaganda. To divide humans from bots.

To drive a wedge in all the progress mankind made.

 

 

Hyungwon’s clinic was pitiable, but due to his decent reputation with the cybernetic community, erecting a shoddy structure with scraps off the street was both cheap and convenient. Terrible construction, but it kept the rats out and protected his equipment. Awful noisy when it rained, but he supposed it wasn’t all that bad.

Gifted at birth with cybernetic knowledge and meticulous fine motor skills, Hyungwon made a living repairing robots and droids. The construction of a tangible clinic expanded his abilities to cyborg creation and ambulatory care. By no means was he a medical professional, but formal healthcare didn’t exist in post-catastrophic times. Everything he knew, he learned from experience. With little experience, many humans, many droids and bots, sentient or otherwise, died on his operating table. And life went on.

Hyungwon met Kihyun years ago, back when Hyungwon walked the streets salvaging scraps for his clinic. Proto Choke was the name of the street gang Kihyun affiliated with. They raced around Neo Seoul with motorized streetbikes painted neon orange and emblazoned with their symbol of two hands choking a smiley face, harassing the city with petty theft and vandalism. In the hierarchy of gangs, they were laughably amateur, and they were often plundered by members of more aggressive, cybernetically-enhanced gangs paid by the corrupt, post-war government to wipe out _sheep._

Occasionally, they dabbled in the drug market, openly pursuing business in street markets in the heart of Neo Seoul. Their negligence was observed by every surveillance camera on every street corner. The government was always watching. They were fools to forget that.

In broad daylight, Proto Choke was ambushed, flanked in the outskirts of Neo Seoul. Kihyun, high on low-grade heroine, was sluggish in his self-defense and sustained several blows to the skull with an aluminum bat. For years he kept it secret, but on that day he begged for his life on his hands and knees with the barrel of a gun shoved in his throat. A face made ugly with tears and snot was made far more hideous with swollen, split, bleeding flesh.

His pleading spared him nothing. Yet unfortunately, he lived.

The aftermath of Proto Choke’s demise left Kihyun pale, cold, and near-death. Drenched in his own blood, he trembled in fetal position behind the melted remains of his streetbike. Lips blue and eyes swollen and bloodshot, he faintly reacted when a compassionate stranger cloaked him in a blanket and carried him away.

He awoke on a chilly, metal table. The lighting was bright, sterile, and though groggy, he flinched in its sharp attention. When he swallowed, his throat was sandpaper dry; when he coughed, bile erupted up his esophagus, stinging on its ascent and cracking the chapped edges of his mouth. Pain seared through his body from the quake of each dry heave, hyper-stimulating his nerves to neurotransmitter-induced fatigue: the perfect example of the human body’s too-efficient self-regulating mechanism of homeostasis.

However, homeostasis was rendered useless with the application of cybernetic parts.

Kihyun explored the room with blurry eyes. He was in some sort of medical shack, possibly a droid repair clinic. Where, Neo Seoul? No, too dingy. He wiped the blood and vomit from his cracked lips. He felt woozy from dehydration.

But, wait, why did that feel different? Wiping his face, what a menial act. Then he noticed it—the metal arm of a robot jutting out of his stump of a shoulder. A robot’s arm. Not his arm. A robot’s arm. Not his arm. A _fake_ arm. A prosthetic arm. A fucking metal, robot, prosthetic arm! NOT HIS FUCKING ARM! He didn’t even feel it. Not the fucking fake, metal, robot arm at least—no, not that! He felt the absence of his arm… like a phantom limb. But, not… this fake metal arm attached to his body…? The sensation, the panic, the dread gripping him by the throat and strangling him was purely from visual stimuli? No… feeling…?

GOD DAMMIT! What was that godawful, incessant _beeping?_ Terrified, he grabbed the robot arm with his real, human arm and pulled and pulled and pulled and _pulled and pulled and why wasn’t it coming off?! why wasn’t it going away?! why couldn’t he rip the fucking thing off?!_ And _look,_ now blood was pooling from the sutures in his real, human shoulder and he couldn’t feel it and his panic intensified because HE COULDN’T FEEL IT. WHAT WAS HAPPENING? WHAT WAS HAPPENING? _WHAT WAS HAPPENING?_

“ _Stop!_ Stop, _please,_ I don’t have any more sutures!”

_Beep, beep, beep..._

Kihyun snapped, pupils blown wide like gaping black holes. “WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU? WHY IS THIS ON ME? IT WON’T COME OFF!” Shortness of breath labored his vocalization. He squirmed on the metal table, struggling with the newfound weight of the metal arm. If he couldn’t rip it off, he’d claw at the synthetic tendons until—

“It’s not supposed to come off! Please stop pulling on it!” Said the panicked voice of a tall, slender man who looked like the world hadn’t hardened him yet.

Somehow, that triggered Kihyun more. The incessant beeping droned on in his ears like buzzing nanites munching on his brain. “I DON’T WANT IT!” he screamed, torn between muffling his ears to mute the beeping or yanking out the short-circuiting tendrils of his robot arm. Ah, the room was so dizzying...

The tall man forced a hand on Kihyun; a desperate attempt to calm him. “Stop! I need you to calm down. I don’t have enough medication to calm you down.”

_Beep, beep, beep..._

Kihyun jerked away from the touch. In doing so, the IV in the pit of his elbow tore from his skin, slashing the puncture hole; blood oozed from the ruptured vein as he wailed in pain. The sensation he was robbed of on one half of his body was agonizing on the other side, the human side, the real side. His panic-induced heart palpitations made his chest tight, uncomfortable, difficult to breath. Eventually, his lightheadedness sedated him as homeostasis attempted to neutralize the chaos.

_Beep, beep, beep beep beep beep beep!!_

The tall man stood still, horrified. Kihyun understood the man’s facial expression as worry. In short, hysterical breaths, he said, “I-I-I’m high, right? That’s it. I’m high.” His eyes stung from tears… when did he start crying?

“What? You’re experiencing withdrawal symptoms and a significant amount of shock,” said the man. Kihyun understood his facial expression as confusion. “Don’t you remember anything?” the man added.

Pathetically, Kihyun rasped, “Who the fuck are you?”

“My name is Hyungwon. I’m not an important person, but I—”

_Beep, beep, beep..._

Tears fell down Kihyun’s cheek on-by-one, rehydrating his chapped lips with salty wetness before crashing to the table below. He held his head low, hunched over his bleeding, human arm almost protectively, defensively. His robot arm lay limp beside him, synthetic tendons ripped from their ports, blood trickling from its sutures. “Hyungwon, why am I like this? How did this happen?”

“You almost died, that’s all I know. I brought you back to my clinic and tried to save you.” Hyungwon said, his voice gentle. Seeing Kihyun like this struck a chord of empathy. “If you keep pulling your arm, I won’t be able to save you. You’re lucky I had the parts to reconstruc—”

“You didn’t reconstruct me. You fucked me up.”

_Beep.... beep…. beep..._

Hyungwon clenched his jaw. “Well, if you want to die, keep doing as you're doing.” First Aid kit in hand, he added, “If you want to live, you have to trust me.”

+

Fast forward, time changed Kihyun and Hyungwon’s dynamic since that night. It had to. This wicked world was no place for an individual. Strength in numbers was the key to survival. Survival didn’t always mean defending turf and picking fights. Most of the time, survival meant passing the time in the company of another human. Surviving lonliness, really.

Becoming a cyborg changed Kihyun, not that Hyungwon knew him before the enhancement anyway. Sometimes people changed for the better, whether forcibly or not, and sometimes they changed for the worse. Without a basis of comparison, Hyungwon accepted Kihyun for who he was now. Sometimes, Kihyun was mean and straightforward, other times he was peaceful and kind. Somewhere between all of that, Hyungwon developed feelings for the boy.

The life of romance was not realistic for two outcasts in a post-catastrophic society. They smuggled outdated bots and droids escaping the tyrannical government of Neo Seoul’s inner city. Living on the border of the deadlands and the outskirts of the inner city, they treaded through perilous waters. Even as smugglers, they had rules: if the refugees brought goods, like copper or medical supplies, Hyungwon updated them in his clinic. If they came poor and empty-handed, as most did, they simply provided refuge until sunrise. The turnover was high because word traveled fast in the cybernetic community.

It was only a matter of time until the government caught wind of their illegal operation. This type of life just wasn’t sustainable. Which made nights like this—when the afterglow of the blood red sunset peeked through the black sky, when fireflies danced in the freedom of the night, when Hyungwon could perfectly dream up how beautiful stars would look adorning the sky—perfect reminders that life could be a little sweet sometimes too.

Sitting in a tattered lawnchair, Hyungwon stared at Kihyun from afar as he cooked. Kihyun whistled as he flipped the gelatinous-something in a frying pan Hyungwon scavenged from the deadlands earlier in the day. Because the night was so lovely, they cooked their food over an open fire. Orange bursts of ember spat, popped, and sizzled. It worried Hyungwon that Kihyun was so close, that he might catch fire, but if he said anything he’d certainly get an earful from the boy. Often times, like his ignorance, Hyungwon bottled up his worries in the interest of survival in this cold, heartless world. 

“Is there something you want?”

“Hm?” Hyungwon snapped out of his daze. A firefly buzzed by.

Kihyun pointed the hot frying pan at him. “You’ve been staring at me. It’s weird.”

Hyungwon scoffed, “You’re weird.” He stood up from his spot on the ground and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Let me know when dinner is done.”

There was a bluff not too far from Hyungwon’s clinic that overlooked Neo Seoul. Just a short stroll away, and one could drink in the imagery. A mote of putrid sewer water divided the outskirts from the deadlands, but the bluff granted the unique opportunity of being both places at once. He always thought it was oddly beautiful the way the purplish glow of the city illuminated the depths of the post-war craters.

He wondered if citydwellers ever thought about life in the outskirts or the deadlands. Did they look outward from their shiny, skyscraper-high units and see the same purplish glow light up the craters of nuclear war? Or were they too blinded by their own glow that they never pondered where the government stashed the rejects, the misfits, the free-thinkers?

Hyungwon sat on the edge of the bluff until he heard Kihyun shout his name. Kihyun didn’t like repeating himself, but Hyungwon liked to push the limits, if only to appreciate the scenery for just a moment longer.


	2. Glitch

_Maize_ was the only cafe worth eating at in the outskirts. Named after the only crop that naturally grew in the nutrient-poor soil of the region, Maize saw a lot of business. As expected for a cafe, it was small but quaint. It fit an impressive amount of tables inside, which made for a packed house with terrible noise control. The banana pancakes were fantastic, though, so it was worth the headache.

Hyungwon and Kihyun made an effort to arrive early so they could grab a good seat. Their preferred table was tucked in a corner away from the entrance where noise echoed only a teensy bit off the walls. A server android named Delila delivered their breakfast with a flirty smile. Every time, Kihyun ordered the banana pancakes, and every time, Delila said they were made with love. Apparently, Kihyun was her type of human.

The busboy bot at a nearby table had an odd, shaky grip, causing ceramic plates to clank against each other noisily. Whenever the bot cleared a table, its body banged into the table and caused a commotion in an otherwise mild atmosphere. Hyungwon figured the bot’s oil was crude, thus causing stiff movements in its joints. How peculiar that the cafe owners hadn’t remedied the issue before opening the cafe this morning.

Back at his table, Hyungwon stared as Kihyun drizzled warm syrup over his stack of pancakes, the sweet liquid dripping down the side of the stack and mingling with the sliced banana border. If he was dog, he’d have been drooling. “Banana pancakes again?”

Kihyun nodded. “Yeah. You seriously trust eating whatever the beef surprise is?”

“No,” Hyungwon mumbled, belly rumbling, as he stared down at his plate of beef surprise. “But I’m too skinny to just eat carbs.”

“So eating roadkill from the deadlands is your only option?” Kihyun sassed as he cut into his stack of pancakes with a dulled knife. Warm and fluffy, their aroma was delicious.

Hyungwon jabbed his meal; it jiggled from the impact. “I eat my feelings, okay?”

“How does that make sense?” Kihyun said with a mouthful of pancake.

“Shut up, Ki~” Hyungwon sassed back as he braved through the first bite of beef surprise.

They enjoyed their meal with lighthearted conversation. Lulls were natural, and neither felt uncomfortable by silence. Having spent the past several years together, each grew to understand silence as a sign of peace. In busy cafes like Maize, silence granted intel. Lots of nomadic folk from the deadlands dined at Maize for a quick meal. As it turned out, nomads liked to gossip.

“D’ya hear?” said Muscular Nomad.

“Huh?” replied Lady Nomad.

“‘Bout the _virus_ ‘er somethin’ in the deadlands.”

She rolled her eyes. “Nah, that’s bullshit.”

“Naw, man. Bots’re dyin’, _explodin’_ ‘n shit. Failed government experiment ‘o somethin’.”

“If that were true then how did it spread, huh?” Lady Nomad challenged.

“Mecha Markets, man. Government pigs coverin’ up their mess by _murderin’_ bots an’ sellin’ ‘em on the black market.”

She pushed her plate away, disgusted. “ _Fuck_ … You sure?”

“It’s what I’m hearin’...” Muscular Nomad shrugged before chomping his toast.

Kihyun narrowed his gaze at Hyungwon, who looked pale. While eavesdropping, they learned two very appalling facts: rumors of Mecha Markets were indeed true, and word of a government-created virus infecting the deadlands. Suddenly, those delicious banana pancakes didn’t seem so appetizing. Discarded or outdated bots from the city were scrapped _alive_ and sold in Mecha Markets for profit. Yeah, bots weren’t built with pain receptors, but they were implanted with the capability to process and feel emotion. More likely than not, governments were experimenting on older model bots when viral strains were detected.

The Cyberwar changed nothing; governments were just as selfish and corrupt as they were decades prior.

To their left, the busboy bot collected dirtied plates from a newly abandoned table. The shake in his grip worsened in the short time Kihyun and Hyungwon ate their breakfast. A stack of dishes in his grasp, the bot’s shoulder spasmed sharply; dishes crashed to the floor with awful clamor, garnering the attention of everyone in the cafe. The nomads shot each other a knowing glance, which triggered Hyungwon’s very visceral response. It wasn’t the beef surprise, it was  _realization_ that made him sick.

The bus boy bot spasmed repeatedly, limbs flailing and joints smoking from lack of lubrication. The crude oil seeped from worn joints like black goo, igniting sparks in areas hot from incessant spasms and twitches. Sparks flared up to white-hot flames, causing all nearby diners to flee from their tables in panic. A small child cried and a woman screamed. The owner dashed in with a fire extinguisher, dexterity lost in his frenzy as he fumbled with the nozzle. Just as a flame sizzled blue, the owner pulled the pin and smothered the fire in a massive cloud of carbon dioxide.

As the cloud cleared, the bus boy bot twitched a few times. Suddenly, the twitching stopped, then an explosion. Robotic parts and metal burst like a bomb in the cafe, pieces of shrapnel lodged into the periwinkle wallpaper. Most diners evacuated when the bot was set ablaze, but Kihyun and Hyungwon found themselves ducking for cover behind a tipped over table, thankfully unscathed. Kihyun was the first to peek over the table. His absence of reaction was misleading because when Hyungwon caught a glimpse of the aftermath he vomited over the table.

The bus boy bot exploded into tiny pieces, leaving only the putrid odor of burning oil as evidence of his existence; the rest of his body embedded in the walls and tables. A large, metal piece Hyungwon identified as the bot's chassis pierced through the owner’s eye socket, the jelly of his eye plopping off the shiny metal in gross chunks. Blood leaked from the fatal injury, making Hyungwon puke for a second time.

 

 

The worst of their day had yet to happen.

When they neared Hyungwon’s repair clinic, a swarm of Neo Seoul police bots trespassed his property. He blanched. Kihyun and himself were not exactly shining examples of perfect citizens. Well, technically, they weren’t citizens—they were legally exiled and colloquially declared outcasts. The business they conducted was illegal, yeah, but it was a moral necessity in a moraless world. Morals and laws sometimes contradicted. So, as outcasts with free will, they made up their minds. Needless to say, they took several liberties with to whom Neo city laws pertained to.

When the police bots detected their return, Hyungwon cringed. Police bots were creepy because their faces were obscured by a helmet mask. Perhaps that was a blessing, for their bodies often lacked skin to reinforce the concept of their cybernetic design. They were built to be large and looming, equipped with two sets of arms—a pair specialized in firearms and the other for hand-to-hand combat. Tall, too. Much taller than even Hyungwon.

“What the fuck is this?” Hyungwon snapped as he and Kihyun approached the clinic.

The police bots stood at attention like the well-programmed machines they were. “Mr. Chae, we are with the Neo Seoul police department. We have reason to suspect you are in violation of the law,” they stated in unison, raising an eerie chill up Kihyun’s arm. Their masks lit up with the green, scrolling text of their words.

Hyungwon asked, “Where’s your warrant?”

A pause, then who appeared to be the squad leader finally spoke. “We are the Neo Seoul police department, we are here to ensure the safety of our citizens.”

Hyungwon opened his mouth to reply, but Kihyun interjected. “You didn’t answer his question. Also, if you haven’t noticed, we aren’t from Neo Seoul. We aren’t _your_ citizens.”

“Where’s your warrant, officer?” Hyungwon repeated, crossing his arms over his chest.

The squad leader looked at his squad. Their masks flashed like strobe lights, blinding Kihyun and Hyungwon. With their guards down, two police bots shoved them into the side of the clinic with such great force it threatened the integrity of construction. Hyungwon wheezed, his throat sore from vomiting earlier. Kihyun gurgled the last of his breath the police’s bot grip would allow.

With a robotic forearm to Hyungwon’s throat, a police bot growled, “We don’t need a fucking warrant, you outskirts trash.”

The police bot strangling Kihyun tightened his squeeze, relishing Kihyun’s grunts of discomfort. “Search the premises, boys,” it ordered.

The raid was invasive and highly destructive—a proper search couldn’t possibly be carried out by brutes. Clearly, they searched with the intention of sabotaging everything Hyungwon spent years building from scavenged scraps instead of _finding_ something worthy of an unwarranted search. Abuse of power in its rawest form. Fifteen minutes of searching and all the bots had to show for it was a measly piece of evidence—foreign currency.   

“Look at that. Evidence,” The squad leader smirked as it held up the foreign bill. “Cuff ‘em.”

 

 

Graffiti on crumbling concrete was the only evidence of purely human existence; a reminder of a simpler time when humans acted out of impulse and suffered little repercussion for minor vandalism. Honestly, a term like vandalism was too harsh for spraying paint on a city structure. What was so wrong with creativity?

What was wrong about painting naked women in psychedelic colors on public property? Telling society it was wrong to see such indecency was a lie; they posted promiscuous advertisements of women all over billboards, bus stations, the internet. The hypocrisy was not lost on astute minds. So, what was it? Was the _original_ human form that repulsive?

Fractal patterns in golden paint layered over strange doodles yanked from the oddest parts of the human mind, perhaps the id, disparaged from the law. Art was just another ripple in pre-war time. With cyberbrains, humans didn’t have ids; with cyberbrains, humans didn’t vandalize.

In fact, humans didn’t do much but obey.

That was the secret of Neo Seoul, of Neo London, of Neo Los Angeles, of Neo Cairo, or of Neo Canberra. Post-war, reconstructed cities were plugged into the same universal network—the Internet—except this time, via a brain-computer interface: a cyberbrain. A cyberbrain was wired to an external device, such as a mechanical body similar to an android chassis, in order to control it with thought. In practice, this meant a human died in order to wire itself, it’s brain, to a robotic body. This was somehow called _progress;_ reinventing what it was to be human, nay, alive.

With cyberbrains, humans dying from old age, illness, or disability had a second chance at a full, productive life. Improved sensory function and motor coordination—it didn’t require glitzy marketing to sell the product to war-stricken families desperate to avoid anything reminiscent of death and destruction. _Robotic bodies survived nuclear war,_ they rationalized, _so now we can too._  

Their negligence was exploited. While the cyber-enhanced individual could tap into external and digital resources, impressively interconnecting with other worldwide cyberbrains, they themselves were vulnerable to internal hacking and manipulation. Unbeknownst to the typical civilian, they were hacked in their own consciousness by their creators, the government.

Eventually, everyone was plugged into the Internet. To that effect, everyone who lived in a Neo city was not human. Freewill was no longer freewill. Progress, remember?

Hyungwon knew all of this because he read books. Neo cities scrapped all evidence of life prior to the Decade of Cyberwar, deliberately eliminating anything that would encourage individuality or counterculturist thought. Most things were set ablaze in great blue flames, but some items were survived by the people who fled Neo city life: the first settlers of the outskirts. Though most of those brave people were murdered by government-paid biker gangs, their belongings were later discovered by their descendants.

A book detailing cybernetics and cyberlife, dated from the year 2043, had been with Hyungwon since he was old enough to read. Written on the backside of the table of contents were the words:

 _To my son,  
_ _May you always understand._

Hyungwon knew nothing of his mother, but he knew she loved him. She wanted him to know about this world in a time when _knowing_ anything was dangerous.

Yet he sat in the back of a police vehicle staring at Neo Seoul with his hands bound together by unbreakable beam-cuffs and a terrible cramp in his back. Kihyun’s cheek smushed against Hyungwon’s shoulder as he repositioned himself to find comfort, but no comfort was to be had in such a tiny, confined space. Though Kihyun groaned his dismay, Hyungwon remained silent, pensively drinking in the cybernetic cityscape from the rear window of the police vehicle.

Neo Seoul was a smart city, by all technical definitions. Holographic, interactive marketing littered everything—faces concealed by digital aliases projected from their cyberbrains, buildings checkerboarded with advertisements broadcasted from thousands of miniature television screens, interactive crosswalks and talking street signs, droids on street corners programmed to preach government propaganda. Revving motors and rubber-burning screeches, biker gangs infested city life.

Kihyun cringed when a biker gang blazed by. It had been years since the incident, but he would forever be triggered by the thunder of a motorcycle engine. He wore his agitation on his face, and Hyungwon stared passively at it until an incredible pinkish glow bathed Kihyun’s features. They both gawked at the scene as the vehicle drove idly by.

A giant hologram shaped like a woman with crimped, teal hair and magenta skin smiled brightly on the edifice of a skyscraper. Her mannerisms were friendly as she waved at the passersby in the concrete jungle below. So lifelike, anyone foreign to Neo city life would’ve assumed she was a human projection instead of an intelligent computer program. Except, that was, for the occasional glitch in her interface.

In fact, glitches were rampant. For a city built on stolen, advanced technology, glitches plagued everything in sight. Most of the time, the glitches were fleeting, likely unseen by the unobservant eye. Hyungwon saw all of it—the dimmed traffic light, the ripple in anonymous aliases, the twitchy preacher droid. He couldn't unsee it. He obsessed over it. Passersby walked unaffected in their defective city. Everywhere he looked, he saw it. They didn’t.

The police car stopped. Little time to adjust their posture, Hyungwon and Kihyun were yanked from the backseat tangled by their beam-cuffs. When they unraveled themselves, they finally could marvel at the massive, multistoried police station. Magnificent architecture reminiscent of pre-war design. A plump officer in a navy blue uniform forced the two into the building with an electric cattle prod. They stood in awkward silence in the center of the main floor as several more officers in uniform circled them.

Every worker in the building stared at them as they entered. Then, their irises glowed green simultaneously; they signed into a hyper-secure intranet with their cyberbrains. Every thought, every action intercommunicated techno-telepathically.

_[ Humans presenting themselves without digital aliases obscuring their face? ]_

_[ How bizarre to leave themselves so vulnerable... ]_

_[ And their clothes… so dirty and plain. Must be from beyond the city. ]_

_[ But… but their cyberbrains are so well barricaded, absolutely impenetrable… I can’t hack them…  ]_

_[ Do you think they’re advanced **black hats? ]_

_[ From beyond the city? Nah… ]_

_[ Enough. This session is over. Police Chief Lee will commence further with these shitty foreigners. ]_

_[ Ah, yes Sir! ]_

_[_ ... Session terminated .. _. ]_

 

 

The interrogation room was cold. Different from the chill of Hyungwon’s clinic, which felt simultaneously sterile and sticky. This room felt like cold metal, all artificial and manufactured. Purplish fluorescent light lit up the table like the cityscape glow in the depths of the surrounding craters. Hyungwon eyed the men in the room. Were they guard bots? Too stiff to be companion androids… Twitchy, too, like nanites were causing them to itch. Glitchy like the city.

It was painfully quiet except for a small buzzing sound that none of the guards seemed to hear; gears grinding into one another due to a jam in the system. Then clacking; stilettos on tile. Someone important was approaching. Subordinates in pressed, navy blue uniforms stood in unhuman unison to open the door. In walked a woman in the same navy blue uniform with a pocket on her left breast adorned with five silver stars and multicolored award ribbons. Her eyes were covered by a dark eye mask similar to clunky sunglasses.

“Madam, it appears they have advanced firewalls in their cyberbrains,” said the tall subordinate with two silver stars on his uniform. He stood two heads taller than her, yet he cowered in her presence.

Annoyed, the Madam rolled her eyes. “Idiot, they’re from the outskirts. They don’t have cyberbrains,” she snarled, tone nasty and unbefitting of her remarkable beauty.

The subordinate’s eyebrows sunk over his eyes in confusion. “You mean… they’re human?”

Madam sighed. “Unfortunately.”

Police chief Chaerin Lee, known affectionately as Madam, was a short woman with a piercing stare. Her blonde hair was impeccably straight and gelled back in a sleek style. Large, glittery earrings hung from each ear, and when she turned away from the bright light of the interrogation room, the lighting would catch on her jewelry almost blindingly. A gentlemanly subordinate pulled a chair for her, and she thanked him politely.

Madam sat with her hands laced together on the interrogation table in front of her. Her posture was that of a government official, Kihyun thought, often having spent much of his youth in sheriff’s offices. He couldn’t focus on anything but her pursed, coral-colored lips. His mother used to wear the same color.

“Cyberbrains?” Kihyun asked, breaking the silence.

“I didn’t tell you to speak,” she scolded. The screen of her mask rumbled with static as if conveying her momentary frustration.

Kihyun retorted, “You can’t tell me what to do. I don’t have a cyberbrain.”

Madam rolled her eyes. “It seems you lack any sort of brain.” She tilted her head in a condescending manner. “You know why you’re here. You violated our good city’s laws. All of which are major offences.”

Hyungwon spoke up. “You burglarized our home—”

“You can hardly call that _shack_ a home,” Chief Lee chuckled.

“—and destroyed our supply without a warrant,” Hyungwon continued.

“We had reason to suspect you were conducting illicit activities that inflict harm upon our citizens. Our response was necessary and urgent.”

“And illegal. Or is _your good city_ above even its own laws?” Kihyun added bitterly.

Madam lifted her chin and looked down at the two of them. “We protect our citizens above all else.”

“What about the virus? What are you doing about that?” Kihyun asked.

Chief Lee laughed again, clearly amused. “A virus in Neo Seoul is outrageous and fals—”

“It’s already in the outskirts, the deadlands… it’ll be here soon,” Hyungwon warned.

Madam’s amused facade gave way to a steely stare. “I welcome you to our good city and you lie to me—”

“I’m not lying!” Kihyun shouted. Hyungwon pressed a palm on Kihyun’s knee under the table to calm him.

Chief Lee smirked. “You’re a criminal. Of course you’re lying.”

“I am not a criminal!” Kihyun shouted again, louder.

“Smuggling of escapees from Neo Seoul is illegal. Operating as a bioengineering and/or medical professional without government approval and licensure is illegal and punishable by death. Unauthorized repair of outdated robotic units is illegal and punishable by death.”

“Distribution and sale of cybernetic parts is also illegal, isn’t it?” Kihyun challenged, referring to the countless Mecha Markets scattered about the deadlands endorsed by Neo city governments under high security from paid-off biker gangs. Apparently laws were not to be broken except by those who created them.

Again, the screen of Madam’s mask rumbled with static. Her coral lips tightened, creasing her pretty face with stress wrinkles. She sighed through her nose and tapped her purple fingernails angrily on the tabletop. Her mask glitched with a multicolored split screen before displaying the universal power-off symbol. A quick blink and the tight posture of her guards slacked. A valiant protective unit rendered useless from one, simple command; cyberbrains manipulated by the remote control of their superior.

“You’re that confident you don’t need your guards?” Kihyun said. Hyungwon, who hadn’t stopped staring nervously at the table since the beginning, flashed Kihyun a concerned look. Where was Kihyun getting this confidence from? Was it even confidence? Seemed more like anger.

Chief Lee smirked. “Yes. I know you can’t hurt me.” She enjoyed the stiffness of Kihyun’s facial muscles as he bit his tongue. Smart men knew when to shut up. It was convenient he knew to do so. “You seem to know a lot more than the usual vermin from the outskirts.”

Without reservation, Kihyun replied, “I know what I need to know.”

“So you think you know everything the government does?” Madam countered.

Kihyun swallowed hard. Much to his chagrin, he paused. The short answer was yes. The prefered answer was long and inextricable. “I know what it doesn’t do,” he said.

“Oh, a champion of the people,” Madam sneered, face ugly from hatred, “a bleeding heart dedicated to a life of good, huh?”

Kihyun gripped the edge of the table with both hands as he leaned in towards Chief Lee. With a snarl on his lips, he shouted, “I know my rights—”

Chief Lee slammed her palms on the table, cutting Kihyun off by taking him by surprise. “You don’t have any—” she yelled menacingly, her mask glitching between static and split screen.

“I do! I don’t have a cyberbrain. You can’t control me!” Kihyun bellowed from the very pit of his soul. The weight of everyone who had ever been marginalized by a crooked government felt heavy on his shoulders, but it was burden he accepted of his volition.

Madam’s mask blinked black, blank, void. She jolted momentarily, then moved with a fluidity foreign from before. She swayed and tilted like a marionette. Kihyun likely didn’t notice such minor details due to the resentment addling his mind, but Hyungwon did. Something happened, something _shifted._ The beautiful woman who sat across from them was no longer the occupant of her body.

“I can control anyone. I control everything. Everything in existence is mine,” Madam growled, purple fingernails _puncturing_ the metal table in a terrifying display of power and anger. No human body could penetrate metal without aid. No standard droid chassis was designed to be so unyielding. Soon, her fingernails splintered from sheer force, faux skin peeling away to reveal synthetic tendons and fraying wires.

“What the fuck...” Kihyun backed away from the destroyed table, jaw agape and eyes wide. He bumped into Hyungwon, who had apparently already retreated from the scene. He flinched at the unanticipated bump. Hyungwon grabbed Kihyun by the shoulder to stabilize the other’s wobbly legs.

The room glitched. For a split second, the lights went out. The buzzing noise intensified. The room was alive, and it was watching them.

They stared in horror as red and blue liquid dribbled from Chief Lee’s nose and blended into a deep purple as it trickled down her lips, chin, only to fall to the tiled floor in large droplets. Her lips trembled as if livened by blood. The bulky mask obscuring her eyes glitched between blackness and static. Purple blood dripped down her cheeks steadily. Hyungwon assumed the blood came from her eyes. Her body convulsed; total system failure was eminent.

“What the fuck…” Kihyun repeated, shock paralyzing him. The horror in his eyes reminded Hyungwon of the time Kihyun awoke on the operating table with his brand new cyber arm.

Madam removed her eye mask slowly despite the tremors in her hands. Lacking the necessary fine motor skills to place the mask on the dismantled table, they tumbled to the floor and shattered. The whites of her eyes were purple with blood, her pupils blown wide, and if Hyungwon knew any better he’d think she was genuinely crying underneath her bloodstained features. With her fractured, split fingertips, she touched the blood on her cheek and looked at it with an eerie lack of emotion. Hyungwon would forever be haunted by that very moment.

Then, Madam froze. Robot stillness. Her face twitched. Her eyes, those blood soaked eyes, rolled into the back of her skull. “Huh,” she somberly half-laughed, “it _is_ true.”

Her body crashed to the floor, dead.

The pulse of the room boomed in Hyungwon’s eardrums like a war drum. Chief Lee may’ve been dead, but the room was still alive. It was still watching. Whatever it was, whoever it was, it knew Kihyun and Hyungwon had _witnessed_ it. The virus. They weren’t brought in for being smugglers, they were targeted because they knew something they shouldn’t.

“Hey, let’s get the fuck out of here!” Hyungwon shouted, trying desperately to keep calm. When he shoved the door, it wouldn’t budge. Though the room glitched, the security did not falter. The impending panic was too profound to suppress, so Hyungwon channeled it by repeatedly banging his fists against the door. Bone to metal caused his knuckles to swell and bleed, smearing bright red on the previously-sterile door. He knew he was too weak to pummel through—he’d need the strength of Kihyun’s cyberarm. “Hey, _hey!_ Kihyun, hey! Let’s go!” he screamed.

Kihyun stood still, frozen. With round eyes he examined Madam’s cold, dead body. “What’s true?” he muttered, unaffected by Hyungwon’s panic. He knew the answer to his own question.

“Who cares, let’s go!” Hyungwon yelled as he kicked the door. The room continued to glitch, but the pulse was steady and rhythmic. Finally, he made a dent in the nearly impenetrable barrier.

“The virus… it’s true?” Kihyun muttered. He was afraid of his own conclusion. He was afraid.

“Kihyun!” Hyungwon screamed. Kihyun snapped out of his daze only to be swept away by Hyungwon’s panic.

Bloody knuckles and a tear-stricken face, Hyungwon pried at the slight opening he managed to make. Kihyun wedged the fingers of his cyber arm into the opening, and with all the force he could muster he coerced the door open. Tendons popped from their insertion points, the remainder of his deltoid muscle strained from extreme pressure, and copper flooded his mouth from inadvertently biting his cheek, but he held it open long enough for Hyungwon to squeeze through. Narrowly escaping with his cyber arm relatively intact, he fell to the floor of the main lobby of the police station exhausted.

Kihyun glanced up at Hyungwon. He attempted to speak through frantic panting. “I… I’m going to… die, Hyungwon.”

“No, Ki—”

“She was... talking about the virus,” Kihyun said, breath stabilizing slightly.

“No, she— _that’s_ not—”

“ _Yeah,_ ” Kihyun sobbed. Blood from his mouth stained his lips. Hyungwon had the luxury of not worrying, he was entirely human. Kihyun was a cyborg, he was a susceptible host. His eyes burned from salty tears. He was going to die.  

The building quaked angrily all around them, but Kihyun was deadweight on the floor. Hyungwon grabbed him by the wrist and pulled with all the strength still in him. He dragged Kihyun across the floor by his cyber arm until his legs gave out a short distance from the exit.

“Kihyun! Come on!” Hyungwon yelled hysterically, jarring Kihyun enough to bring him back to self awareness.

Neo Seoul was alive with glitches, it's beautiful, staccato heartbeat rendered to incessant buzzing. The massive holographic woman was reduced to ripples and wavelengths. Advertisements and signs deafened the city with static noise. The clean streets were drenched in purple blood. Citizens twitched and convulsed like Chief Lee, screaming in the agony of their demise. Neo Seoul was sick. The virus was here.

“What the… fuck…?” Hyungwon gasped, horror stricken. Kihyun shook his head, unable to process the unsettling scene before him. Hyungwon looked at Kihyun, brows furrowing.

“Hey, you’re bleeding...”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Black hats are hackers who hack for personal gain or malicious intent.


	3. Blood in Gutters

Hyungwon remembered it not fondly, but starkly.

Hundreds of bloodied faces―yes, _faces,_ not holograms―stretched in horror. No matter the design, synthetic or flesh, metal or bone, purple blood or red, anguish was universally identified; pain was suffered by all. Children sobbed as they tugged on their mother’s limp arms, too young to understand death, too young to understand disease. Why would they anyway? Their artificially-crafted world was void of pestilence, famine, war, death. The sacrifice of their mortal body―a choice that was made for them when they were mere embryos―guaranteed a life without pain. The government guaranteed it.

Yet they cried until their faces were swollen and red as they desperately attempted to awaken their deceased parent. Some children were less fortunate than others. Pristine white, light-up sneakers stained from stomping in purple puddles, little Ara had no idea it was a puddle of daddy’s blood. Little Jisung sat crisscross on the dirtied city asphalt surrounded by chunks of mommy’s brain matter. Well, cyberbrain matter―less spongy, more wirey. Purple blood flooded city gutters, drowning the cybercity in disease.

Lucky for Hyungwon and Kihyun, they escaped Neo Seoul before the children started exploding too. For Kihyun, cybernetic travesties were inevitable. Born in Neo Seoul, he grew up wise to the cybernetic hell humans caged themselves in. School taught him that hardships were eradicated post-war; that death was now a _choice,_ not simply a fact of life. Lies. Choices were not individualized; choices were made and exerted unto all via their cyberbrains disguised as an upgrade to their operating system.

At the age of ten, Kihyun rejected cyberbrain implantation. That was twenty-three years ago, back when cyberbrains were still optional modifications. An outcast ridiculed in school, he grew resentment. When his parents mysteriously died, he fell victim to the streets. Proto Choke found him in a time where need for human interaction was essential to human development. The rest of the details were fuzzy, mostly due to cheap heroin use and self-blocks. It wasn’t like it forgot the details, he just never shared more.

Hyungwon lived a different life. They never really talked about each other’s lives prior. Raised by outdated bots in the outskirts his whole life, Hyungwon was naive to the influence of the inner city government. He couldn’t shake the image of crying children from his brain. The blood, the metal, screaming droning in and out of his eardrums like something from his worst nightmare.

Locked in a trauma-induced comatose, senses dulled, Hyungwon rendered himself useless as Kihyun readied their supplies. He wasn’t desensitized to horror of this magnitude like Kihyun appeared to be. Christ’s sake, he made a living repairing and nurturing creatures to full health―catastrophic death left him shellshocked. The chaos around him, the chaos in _his_ own repair clinic, hummed lowly in his ear drums as he idly sat on the cold floor. Eyes wide like saucers, face blanched, he wondered if there was anything left in his stomach to puke up.

“Get yourself together, Hyungwon. We can’t just survive. We won’t. We have to protect ourselves,” Kihyun lectured as he thrusted a bottle of water into Hyungwon’s chest. Hyungwon caught it reflexively, and when he glanced up, he winced at Kihyun’s face of intolerance.

Slowly, carefully, Hyungwon muttered, “I don’t want you to be sick, too.” Faint, but he knew Kihyun heard it by the way his lips tightened like he, too, was battling the reality of their circumstance.

Kihyun sighed through his nose as tension fell from his shoulders. He dropped to his knees beside Hyungwon. The intense way Hyungwon watched Kihyun’s every move, like he was hypersensitive to the slightest uncharacteristic gesture, broke Kihyun’s heart into a million pieces. He didn’t have the courage to meet Hyungwon’s stare, so he stared at the floor instead.

Hyungwon wanted to tell him how he felt, how he found motivation to get through the day just for Kihyun, that Kihyun’s smile was the brightest part of his day, that life was better with him. If they were going to die, Kihyun needed to know that. But, again, he didn’t. He couldn’t bring himself to. Too shy, too self-conscious, too meek. All the chaos, all the screaming, all the blood lost in a moment of human weakness. Silence was golden, but in this moment, silence was tar, darkness, and suffering.

But from moment of human weakness came human compassion. Kihyun hugged Hyungwon for the first time in all their years together―vulnerability channeled through physical affection. “We will get through this. Together,” Kihyun said, and Hyungwon buried his face in Kihyun’s chest, tears soaked up by the fabric of his shirt. _This_ was what Kihyun felt like, warm and soft, but most of all, Hyungwon never realized how starved he was of affection until Kihyun gave it to him.

If _this_ was what peace and comfort felt like, to hell with the rest of the dying world.

 

 

Only took seven days for the virus to get a nickname―Purple Hack. Transmission was unknown so the hack was speculative, but purple blood flowing through Neo Seoul like some kind of fucked up, whimsical river was the more literal interpretation t of the nickname. At one point, scientists were close to discovering the encrypted viral strain, but the virus was too widespread, too deadly. It infected everyone before they discovered it.

Not too sure why, but Hyungwon and Kihyun headed north. Word around town said there was a cure there, or at least a treatment of some kind, to combat the virus. To be honest, no one particularly knew _what_ the north actually was. A direction on a compass, yes, but who lived there? What did they do there? No neo cities erected, no humans or robots alike dwelled there. Those with cyberbrains swore the north never existed since there seemed to be a dark, blank spot over that portion of their built-in GPS systems. Yet, interestingly, robots and androids from the deadlands fervently insisted the north was real. Why?

“It’s not a real place,” Kihyun scoffed, face crusted and dry from sand and wind, “The north.” His lips cracked from dehydration, and he inhaled large breaths to enrich his lungs with sand-coated oxygen. Hyungwon wrapped Kihyun’s cybernetic arm in an old gauze rag, citing it’ll act as a protective barrier in the event of viral exposure. Kihyun called that wishful thinking.  

Since they started their journey north, they trekked through the sand dunes immediately outside the outskirts of the now-deceased Neo Seoul. Glorious purple night no longer bathed the post-war craters, lighting the way in the dark of night. Now, nothing but the starless night sky acted as their beacon; bleak, hopeless.

“Kihyun, I’m telling you. It’s like the stars: I’ve never seen them, but I know they exist. The north existed once, it can’t just disappear,” Hyungwon explained. The agitation on Kihyun’s face revealed exactly how _long_ Hyungwon had been rambling.

Step after step in the loose sand, muscles fatigued from endless, aimless walking, they trudged through the elements. Occasionally, they’d hear a bloodcurdling scream followed by an explosion: another life lost. Purple Hack was swift and deadly, and it was killing everyone they knew in this fucked up world.

“We’re wasting time… We don’t even know where we’re going,” Kihyun complained for the fourth time. Then he saw it―what looked like tents muddled by a sun-warped horizon. Tents? Did refugees and nomads this far out live in tents? Guess it made sense, they were several hundred miles from technology and metal and infrastructure.

When he and Hyungwon approached the tents, the travesty chilled them to the core. Purple Hack reached even the deadest of the deadlands. As they explored the ruins, Hyungwon noticed a shriveling, purple-stained banner. Eastfield Mecha Market. His stomach dropped, face blanched; that similar feeling of nausea soured his stomach.

Eastfield Mecha Market was a cyber graveyard enshrouded in purple mist. Shelves of dismembered robots on display like vegetables at a conventional market, all shiny and perfect-looking. Arms and legs strewn up like slabs of meat for the smart consumer to judge and prod. Heads and chassis placed behind glass, obviously expensive and valuable and prone to a thieving hand. Every face neutral, a blank slate of the robot who once inhabited each hollow piece, who animated each dismembered limb; separate parts of a whole exploited for financial gain by a lying, shitty government.

Nothing was safe anymore. Well, not that it ever was. Splatters of purple blood corroded through metallic hulls like the worst kind of acid. Puddles of purple coated the sandy ground. Exposed tendons and short-circuited wires, faces of horror on human scavengers and consumers, fingers and toes scattered. A metal graveyard reeking of rotted copper, putrid mold, and musty, hot atmosphere. Screams of terror resonated in the background, or so Kihyun’s imagination led him to believe.

Absolute destruction. No one came here. No one saved these bots. Who would? Who could? No one was safe. Besides, these were the outdated, the discarded, those tinkered with by the the government.

Quiet, disquiet. No ground barren enough to walk without stepping on deceased kin. Kihyun's jaw clenched so tightly a terrible pressure was beginning to form at his temple, slightly more intense than the pressure behind his eyes. He had to resist the urge to cry, _he had to_ ; Hyungwon was too sensitive, relied too heavily on Kihyun’s feigned bravado, so Kihyun chose to suppress his feelings. The smell was overwhelming, stickly; his nostrils stung, his throat burned as he swallowed the bile bubbling up his esophagus. _No reaction, no fear, c’mon Kihyun,_ he thought to himself, _feel nothing, feel nothing, feel nothing._

Hyungwon’s vision was blurry from tears. He felt like dying. How could he be alive when bodies of bots and androids littered the ground? The creatures he spent his life repairing. What did they ever do to deserve a life like this? A demise like this? Hyungwon was an actual criminal, albeit vigilante, but he knew he was more nefarious than the bodies that lay before him. It was unfair. They didn’t deserve to die.

“I have to save them. Look at them, they’re dying. I have to save them. I can fix this, I can, I just…” Hyungwon said as he frantically searched for anything he could use to repair. Any medicine, tools, just anything. He had to help.

Kihyun, who was a fair distance from Hyungwon, surveyed the damage. “No, Hyungwon... ” he began, though his voice trailed out. No one here needed saving because everyone was dead. It was too late. He'd never say it to Hyungwon, but dead meant not contagious. Dead meant they were safe for just a little while longer. If the north was a real place, it was probably dangerous. At least this was a temporary safe haven.

Just then, a small companion android, probably simulated at age ten or eleven, tapped Hyungwon gingerly on the shoulder. A cute little girl bot with a round face and a boxy grin, probably meant to be a sister bot in a household unable to naturally reproduce. The layer of artificial flesh over her rosy face revealed the cold, metal cranium within; a reminder of her artificial design. For some reason, knowing that didn't make her tears seem artificial too. She couldn't feel pain, but she understood suffering. Her people, robots and droids, were strewn about the market in clunks and pieces.

His first instinct was to clutch onto her, to hug her and comfort her. So he did. Her tiny hands grabbed at his shirt like a desperate child seeking creature comfort. Her sniffles stabbed at Hyungwon's heart, thousands of needle pricks into each chamber, and when she pulled back to look at him, he didn't think he was man enough to meet her gentle gaze. _Be strong,_ he thought, _she's been through worse than you._

When she withdrew, he sucked in the coppery air, braced himself, and met her eyes. That breath lodged in his throat when she hissed and bared sharpened, chipped, ceramic teeth at him. She lunged, strong due to her metallic infrastructure, and tackled him to the rotten ground. Flesh frayed at her fingertips, sharp metal clawed at his skin, shredding his shirt and lacerating his human skin until rivers of red marred the pristine white. Hyungwon yelled, too weak to pry the crazed droid off of him, palms shoving at her tiny chest as she repeatedly bit and slashed him.

Fuck, he didn't want to do this... but he had to, fight or flight. _Fight or flight._ He managed to encase her small neck in his hands, squeezing and pushing until she was forced to relent. Air wasn't a necessity for her, he wasn't actually choking her, but he couldn't think of anything better. Fuck, it was hard to think at all. God, she was so sharp, the puncture wounds in his forearm and neck oozed blood so quickly he was rapidly feeling faint... Her eyes, they bulged out of their sockets, purple tears dribbled from her tear ducts and splattered on his swollen cheeks. Warm, thick, disgusting.

Where the fuck was Kihyun? Where the fuck was Kihyun? _Where the fuck was Kihyun?_

His biceps gave out, his self-defense crumbled, yet her thrashing and hissing ceased. Blurry eyes attempted to focus on his surroundings―fight or flight―yet the blood loss was distracting; his human body was forcing him to feel the trauma, to recognize this wasn't fight or flight, this was flight. This was _get the fuck out now_. Fuck homeostasis, this was self-preservation in the climax of danger.

He focused more still, hands groping the ground to lead the body to safety. Apparently, he was on his back, so he pushed himself upright with immense strain, and his vision made out the form of someone tall, at least taller than the girl bot. Oh... the taller figure was fighting, no, _brutalizing_ the tiny bot. Hyungwon blinked through his impending migraine, steadied his breathing, ignored the warm trickle of blood down his neck and arm. Slowly, he honed in on reality.

Did he black out?

The taller figure, it was Kihyun. And he... he was... _holy shit,_ he was bludgeoning the little girl with her own dismembered arm. “Fucking hell, Kihyun!” Hyungwon shouted, though his diaphragm clearly hadn't recovered enough for such exclamations. Teeth gritted, he wheezed as he grabbed his side to somehow mitigate his pain. Kihyun never stopped, just repeatedly beat her until her metal skull was totally demolished. No cute, round face with a boxy grin, just the shattered remains of another infected victim.

Hunched over and heaving, Kihyun stared at her destroyed body. For the first time since his near-death experience with ProtoChoke, he felt powerful. Revenge was powerful. That sick, little girl didn't assault him, but her _kind_ did. Her kind was the reason he was enhanced. Her kind was the reason he became one of them. Monsters killed monsters, right?

Purple blood seeped from her beaten metal skeleton, so he justified his actions by claiming he saved her from herself. “It was a mercy kill,” Kihyun said as he looked at Hyungwon.

Horror-stricken, Hyungwon asked, “What part of that was merciful?”

“Lets just go…” Kihyun muttered. Hyungwon couldn't possibly understand.

 

 

It didn’t take long for them to find discarded weapons―guns, military grade, with broken lasers but intact standard control. Kihyun said they got lucky they found ammo. It was possible no one scavenged Mecha Markets for fear of contracting the disease from the heaps of infected corpses. Granted, the ammo they found was basic and limited. A standard bullet filled with gunpowder, which was ineffective against most upgraded bots. Explained why it was found here in a place of scraped, outdated robots and androids.

They collected all they could and kept exploring, kept walking. As they walked, Hyungwon kept Kihyun at a distance. He couldn't unsee the murder. Everything he knew about Kihyun was wrong. Never once did he think Kihyun was capable of murder. He was just in a petty gang, right? The kind that fucked around vandalizing and getting high, right? Fuck, his thoughts were to strenuous to sort out, especially as he trudged through body after fallen body, shoes so stained by blood he'd forgotten their original color.

If only he ventured out sooner instead of cooping himself inside his shitty repair clinic terrified of a virus that didn't even infect humans. He could've saved the very creatures who support him, raised him in the absence of his parents. He could've been there for them like they were there for him. But he wasn't. He was a coward. A coward that trembled even in the presence of the man, the murderer, he felt affection towards. The gun in his hands felt heavy and foreign.

The silence between them was worse than the silence of the dead. _Speak, you coward,_ Hyungwon thought, _say something._ "I-I think the virus mutated," he said softly, cautiously.

"Oh yeah?" Kihyun hummed.

"I mean, they weren't always... hostile, were they?"

"Dunno," Kihyun shrugged, indifferent.

"I don't remember people in Neo Seoul attacking each other. They just died," Hyungwon justified.

Still indifferent, Kihyun replied, "Guess that's true."

Squeezing the handle of the gun, Hyungwon muttered, "That little girl... I don't know why else she would've attacked me." Just the weight of the weapon felt evil.

Kihyun sighed, "Because she's―"

Suddenly, a cyborg crawling on the deadlands sand, not quite as debilitated as the others, clutched onto Kihyun's ankle like a vice grip, babbling hysterically. Cuts and scrapes on his body suggested he was infected, but perhaps he was in an early stage before the total cyberhack of his operating system. “Stop talking! _They’re_ listening, they’re _always_ listening. They have eyes and ears _everywhere._ Nobody with enhanced parts is safe!”

Hyungwon resisted the urge to rush over to the poor cyborg, to treat his injuries and dress his wounds. But alas, no medical supplies, no rationale for treatment; the virus infiltrated him and the infection already gained control of his legs. It was only a matter of time until he, too, fell victim to the Purple Hack.

With sad eyes, Hyungwon watched as Kihyun crouched down to be level with the other cyborg.  Silently, Kihyun stared at the dirtied, diseased face of his cyborg brethren. The iris of the cyborg's eyes had purple flecks eating the pretty hazel tint. Kihyun tilted his head as the cyborg looked on with bated breath and tearful eyes. No words, just actions; Kihyun planted the barrel of his pistol between the cyborg's brows, pulling the trigger as the cyborg erupted into tears. A human skull, a metal bullet, chunks of exploded brain matter and purple-red blood on the ground behind them. Mercy killing was a subjective term. Monsters killed monsters.

Kihyun shook the cyborg's grip from his ankle like he had stepped in dog shit. When he turned around, Hyungwon punched him dead in the nose. The crunch was audible and blood smeared over the broken feature, on his lips, his cheeks, chin. Fuck, who'd have known a broken nose lit up every nerve in the face.

" _The fuck―!?_ "

“I need the old Kihyun to come back to me! You’ve changed,” Hyungwon shouted with an anger he seldom felt, “A-Are you sick? Do you have the―?” His bloodied knuckles throbbed from the impact.

“I’m fine!” Kihyun yelled, dazed and holding his nose. He felt lightheaded, and he wobbled as he moved. "Why the―?"

Guilt strangled Hyungwon. Immediately, he grabbed Kihyun's shoulders to comfort and steady him. “You’re _sick._ You need help… we’ll get the medicine and get you cured,” he said, worried.

Kihyun shoved Hyungwon away. “Don’t be so delusional. There isn’t a cure.” Hyungwon reached for him again, and again Kihyun shoved him away. Once, twice. Harder, farther. Away, away, away. “You made me this way, you’re the reason I got sick. If I wasn’t enhanced, I’d be okay. _You_ fucked me up, remember?"

Kihyun shoved Hyungwon to the grown, and the other fell next to the dead cyborg. Hyungwon flinched, wanted to cry, wanted to yell, wanted to punch Kihyun in the mouth and then kiss it immediately after. Kihyun straddled him, consumed by his anger and pain, thinking like a beast losing control of his civility. Impulsively, he choked Hyungwon with his cyberhand, relishing how fragile the body part felt in a metal embrace. "Take responsibility for your actions, Hyungwon!"

Hyungwon gasped, tears drenching his face. He was weak to a little girl, and he was weak to Kihyun's cyberarm―the arm he transplanted onto the man attempting to murder him. This wasn't the Kihyun he knew. Even on his angriest days, this wasn't Kihyun. This could never be Kihyun. Which meant only one, sobering thing: Kihyun was infected. The Purple Hack was changing him, _killing him_. Slowly, painfully, so that all who were near and dear could suffer too.

Scared for his life, Hyungwon pointed his gun at Kihyun. A shaky finger hovered over the trigger. He was a coward, remember? A fucking coward who was being killed by the man he... the man he fucking loved... Fight or flight. A coward always chose flight.

Kihyun's wide, crazy eyes bored into Hyungwon's dying soul, and Hyungwon wondered if Kihyun saw himself in the reflection. “Kill me! _Kill me!_ ” Kihyun screamed like a challenge, like he much preferred death.

Hyungwon, crying, hands still shaking, screamed, “I can’t!”

“Kill me!”

“I can’t!”

 _“Kill me!_ ”

Hyungwon's voice cracked and his intensity was lost. “I can’t, Ki...” He dropped the gun to his side and just cried.

Kihyun loosened his grip on Hyungwon's neck. “ _Why?_ ” he asked defensively.

“Because! I love you,” Hyungwon shouted. Fuck it, it didn't need to be a secret anymore. If Kihyun was going to die anyway, the bastard deserved to know the truth.

Kihyun recoiled and sat back off of Hyungwon. He stopped breathing, he stopped thinking. His hands burned with the influence of evil, and in that moment he knew he was going to die. Hyungwon, the person who knew him best out of everyone, detected it right away. He was infected. As he stared at Hyungwon's battered body, how his whole body convulsed from the depth of his sobbing, Kihyun pulled him close and hugged him with all the humanity left in his being.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reference for the [Mecha Markets](https://muse-aesthetic.tumblr.com/post/165443752097/skincube-android-purgatory-illustration-for-the).


	4. Now or Never

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a [playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4aI5u_isBFZ6RPvn3rJed9XRZZ79fmn_)!
> 
> For the Sci-fi square for MX Bingo V4.

From over Hyungwon’s shoulder Kihyun saw it.

Heaps of robots rising from their dismembered debris enshrouded by a mist of rich purple. Was it blood? Was it a _smog_ of the Purple Hack? Groaning, screaming, a clash of metal on metal, synthetic joints popping back into place. A vast, dark presence that reeked of decay and copper. Through the thick mist a thousands eyes glowed purple, boring holes through Kihyun as they march forth towards them. It wasn’t a smog, it _was_ the Purple Hack.  

 _“Fuck…_ Hyungwon!” Kihyun warned frantically, tapping Hyungwon’s shoulder with increasing panic upon his very ghastly discovery. _“Hyungwon!_ Hyungwon, there’s a fucking _wave_ of them…”

Hyungwon furrowed his brows and turned his head the same direction Kihyun was gawking. All the decrepit, diseased corpses that lay scattered about the Mecha Market had reanimated, lopsided and haggard but hobbling at an alarmingly brisk pace towards them. Like a tidal wave of cybernetic undead, they surged forth in malicious unity, their purple eyes like lasers through the loose sand and setting sun.

Hyungwon’s heart beat wildly in his chest, and he shoved away from Kihyun in a misdirected mechanism of self-defense. Kihyun stumbled backwards on his ass, palms breaking his fall. The dry deadlands air sucked the wetness from Hyungwon’s tears, leaving salty trails on his puffy, swollen eyes; he blinked away the crust from his eyes. They stared at each other with utter hopelessness.

What the hell was happening? Why were the dead coming back to life? Was dying once not enough?

Why were they hostile?

Images of the cute little girl with bloodlust in her eyes strangling the life out of him flooded Hyungwon’s brain, causing his throat to throb as fear recreated her murderous grip on his fragile throat. He touched his neck subconsciously as he stared blankly at Kihyun. After seconds that crept by like an eternity, Hyungwon whispered, “Where the fuck do we go?”

“Away? I don’t fucking know!” Kihyun yelled, defeat reducing his tone to a desperate rasp. Yet he scurried to his feet, kicking up loose deadlands sand as the will to survive moved him.

Hyungwon followed suit, scrambling to his feet amidst the dirt clouds, coughing as the dense dust muddied his lungs and obscured his vision. A few hurried steps and he tripped, palms planting into the earth to break his fall, knees crashing to the ground painfully as he cried out. _Fuck!_ After everything he’d gone through his body was so weak—he was hungry and exhausted and bleeding and throbbing; the dry deadlands air drained the moisture from his skin and lips, they cracked and bled. His arms wobbled as he pushed himself up, depleting his strength.

Kihyun extended a hand to help Hyungwon up, though Hyungwon only saw five, metal fingertips poke out amongst the sand cloud. He grabbed the hand and was rocketed to his feet, the pull strenuous on his sore limbs but he prevailed. Together, they ran as fast as their tired, aching feet could carry them, ungracefully tripping over foothills of loose sand or sharp rifts in the dunes. Their muscles far beyond fatigued and unable to produce lactic acid to propel motion, only the sheer power of will moved them through lilac dusk.

“Shit, they’re _fast._ Why are they fast?” Hyungwon panted, voice like sandpaper as he inhaled deep, arid breaths. The sea of groaning, glowing undead chased them with unwavering energy.

“I don’t know! You’re the expert!” Kihyun shouted, to which Hyungwon shook his head emphatically. He wasn't a goddamn expert—no one knew _anything_ about these cyberzombies, let alone a nobody from the outskirts like _him._ Maybe if he had a cyberbrain to receive emergency updates, but he doubted anyone with that authority was alive.

"I-I'm not!" Hyungwon screamed, his feet failing him as he stumbled to the ground on his knees. He dropped his face in his sand-caked hands. "I can't do this. I'm not meant to do this."

Kihyun dug his heels in the sand upon Hyungwon’s abrupt halt. Chest heaving as he struggled to catch his breath, he dropped to his knees in front of Hyungwon. "What are you talking about?" he accused, shoving Hyungwon’s shoulder with his cyberarm.  

Hyungwon shook his head slowly, as if realization of his mortality _finally_ dawned on him. His dried lips trembled and his face contorted into one of anguish, eyes welling up again. The tears burned the second time they streamed down his dirtied face, stinging the fresh wounds in his cracked lips. Never had he _needed_ to survive before. He lived comfortably in his clinic; he was taken care of by robots and droids in exchange for repairing their outdated parts. Never in his life had he reached rock bottom. There was no suffering. There was no starving. There was no physical pain. It wasn’t a great life, but it was never _that_ bad either.

Kihyun, though? Kihyun grew up in Neo Seoul battling the corrupt government and its brainwashed cyberbrain populous from _birth._ Toiling through abandonment and separation anxiety, surviving the dangerous streets, joining a biker gang because there was strength in numbers and a sense of belonging in solidarity, falling into hard drugs, and getting brutally beaten within an inch of his life only to non-consensually undergo limb replacement surgery with a cybernetic arm. He struggled his entire life to be void of the very thing a stranger stitched into his human flesh—cybernetic enhancement. Kihyun was the _epitome_ of survivalism.

How could Hyungwon compare? How could he even _dare_ compare himself to Kihyun?

Now, Kihyun was _infected_ and _dying_ because of Hyungwon’s selfishness. He turned Kihyun into a victim by simply trying to save his life. No, not again. This time, Hyungwon wouldn’t hold Kihyun back. This time, Kihyun deserved life because of Hyungwon’s _selflessness._

“I’m too fucking weak,” Hyungwon sobbed, body aching from the depth of his pain. “I can’t run anymore. _Please_ … go without me.”

Kihyun hooked a finger under Hyungwon’s chin and looked him dead in the eyes. _"You're_ getting through this, Hyungwon—"

"What about you?" Hyungwon demanded, jerking his chin out of Kihyun’s touch. His teary eyes stared at Kihyun incredulously.

 _"We're_ getting through this," Kihyun lied. Hyungwon scoffed bitterly. Kihyun always was a terrible liar.

They held each other’s stare, sharing a moment of clarity, of knowing that this was _their_ day of doom. There was no coming back from this moment. No one looked death in the eyes and returned an unchanged person. No one looked life in the eyes and stayed the same. This was post-Cyber War. This was an apocalyptic life. This was an existence of scavenging for parts when wealthy government officials scavenged off _living_ robots and exploited traumatized human beings who entrusted their security and protection in the wicked hands of a warped collective mind. This was a fucked up life they were born into, forced to claw and scratch their way just to maintain status quo.

Fuck greatness, they were never destined for it anyway.

The urgency of their predicament slammed into them, ripping them from their intimate haven of clarity. A stampede of cybernetic zombies was coming for them. It was now or never.

Through watery vision, Hyungwon noticed a small, black object in a clearing of dust. _The gun._ "Get the fucking gun!" he shouted, pointing at the weapon with a shaky finger.

"Are you crazy? It's back there," Kihyun complained. "As in I'm going to fucking _die_ getting the gun."

Hyungwon shifted to a kneeling position and kept a wary eye on the wave of zombies. "They're robots! We can't outrun them," he replied without looking at Kihyun. They were close enough for him to clearly discern faces, and the newfound revelation terrified him.

He studied their mannerisms, how they moved, how they looked at Kihyun and himself with malice. Never had he experienced animosity from robotkind—they were always polite and always thoughtful. Whatever the Purple Hack really was, he hoped future history books wouldn’t falsely blame robots for this genocide; they weren’t the enemy, they were the victims. This was history repeating itself.

“What about _that?”_ Kihyun’s voice stirred Hyungwon from his trance of observation. He followed Kihyun’s finger, which pointed at a large, boxy object in the near distance. It looked like an old transport vehicle from possibly a half decade ago; older designs were sharper, more angular. It was rusty and sand-caked from enduring the elements. Who knew if it was functional.

“A vehicle? You think it’d even work?” Hyungwon asked.

Kihyun shrugged. “I don’t know, but I’m getting the damn gun and you’re gonna get that fucking vehicle to work.”

Hyungwon used to raid vehicles like that when government transport crews stopped at rest stops for the night. Late in the evening, tired crews would abandon their full cargo load in favor of shoveling beef surprise down their gullet at Maize. For government vehicles, their security system was weak—hacking into them was hardly a challenge for someone of Hyungwon’s technical prowess. It took a while, though, so he’d only gather the spoils of one vehicle before crews returned with full bellies and replenished energy.

Hyungwon never ventured far out in the deadlands, so he wasn’t knowledgeable of what actually existed this far out; he couldn’t rationalize why anyone would haul cargo out this far, let alone government vehicles. Since when did the government want anything to do with the deadlands and its people? Then he remembered the Mecha Markets. His heart steeled. His stomach dropped. They were trafficking bots. _Fucking bastards._

That sand-caked vehicle drove robots to their cruel death. He only hoped the Purple Hack served the government personnel the justice they deserved.

Hyungwon exhaled the stress he harbored. “Kihyun, I’m not—”

“Figure it out!” Kihyun shouted before jumping to his feet and racing into the undead fray, kicking up loose sand on his ascent. Hyungwon lurched towards him, desperate to grab hold of clothing to yank him back to safety. Kihyun was right, it was too dangerous to fetch the gun. They’d been stationary for too long and now the horde of cyberzombies was critically near. Yet, Hyungwon’s fingertips merely swiped the hem of Kihyun’s shirt. He was too slow; it was too late.

Kihyun’s heart rattled in his ribcage. _What was he doing?_ He was going to die a martyr for a nonexistent cause. _Was he fucking stupid?_ Shit, he was going to puke. _No,_ he had to swallow the bile and fake the courage. He probably did an awful job of convincing Hyungwon he was brave, but there was no going back now. He had the opportunity to fight back, if only he could get the gun; they could actually have a chance _if only he could get the gun._

This was infinitely more exhilarating than anything he’d done in Proto Choke. Strapping bombs to cars was child’s play compared to leaping for a gun in the pinnacle of survival against a wave of cybernetic zombies frothing at the mouth with purple blood. Kihyun crash-landed on his face, body toppling ungracefully over his head from the inertia. He flopped to the ground on his back, the breath knocked out of his lungs from impact. He wheezed for precious air as he flipped over, his cyberarm feeling blindly for the gun he unintentionally covered with sand when he leapt. His feet scrambled to correct his body into a more advantageous guard. When he attempted to push himself upright, a hand like a vice grip squeezed his shoulder with enough pressure to puncture skin.

 _“Fucking hell!”_ Kihyun screamed, reflexively jabbing his elbow into the offending attacker. The bones of his elbow splintered against a sturdy metal unbreakable by organic material. He cried out in pain, his already weakened body prone to attack. White bone poked out from the juncture of his elbow, red blood dripping from each point of exit in his split skin. His arm went numb from adrenaline as his body fought the injury, though it felt like white noise consuming his body.

With a massive, metal hand, Kihyun was shoved back down into the sand. He hopelessly groped mounds of sand for the gun, dread washing over him as his attacker’s identity was revealed through a clearing. An agricultural robot used for drilling through tough terrain peered down at him with glowing, purple eyes and unsightly, purple foam stuffed in the corner of his unhinged jaw. Black, tar-like oil clogged his joints and impeded his mobility in a way similar to the bus boy bot at Maize. It emitted a faint buzzing noise from its foamy mouth.

The bot raised its large, tapered drilling arm high in the evening sky, then struck at Kihyun with immense force. Kihyun screamed, panic consuming him, body acting of its own volition as he somehow dodged the assault. The drilling arm pierced the hard earth between Kihyun’s splayed legs, surrounding soil cracking like eggshells from the sheer force. The driller bot tugged its arm several times in an attempt to uproot the drill’s firm embedment. _Oh, was it stuck?_ Suddenly, Kihyun grew acutely aware of a key detail—the drill wasn’t actually spinning due to sludge, so the bot used the arm as a blunt weapon instead of a drill.

Kihyun’s groping hand _finally_ found the object he was sent for. Wide eyed, he took the moment to escape. When the driller bot refocused on Kihyun, Kihyun whipped the solid handle of the gun into the robot’s face, causing it to stagger back despite its drill anchoring it to the ground. It collapsed to the ground, too bulky and top-heavy to stabilize itself. Kihyun scurried to his feet, capitalizing on the bot’s vulnerability by stomping on its drill arm and punting it in the head with his hard boot. The faint buzzing sound it made stuttered. With his cyberarm, Kihyun ripped the bot’s head right off its body; tendons and wires sparked as the synthetic tendrils dangled from the decapitated head. Purple blood gushed like a fountain from its neck, bathing Kihyun.

A sense of pride overwhelmed him. That same sensation of excitement and bloodlust from his earlier kills welcomed him in its cold, grotesque embrace. No longer did fear paralyze him. If Kihyun was going to die a martyr, then he was going to take everyone else with him. Killing didn’t have to be about survival—it could be about the _thrill_ of it. Fuck, the mere thought of it tingled his synapses.

Was it Kihyun, or was it the virus that had a penchant for murder? Was he still his own person, or had the virus thoroughly infected him? Were they separate entities, or had he become the Purple Hack? His brain answered him with uproarious laughter. His body ached, but the hurt from the laughter felt good. The pain was good. The pain meant Kihyun was still alive somewhere inside. The virus hadn’t won yet, but it was only a matter of time.  

Whizzing, buzzing, and other unhuman noises came from the sand cloud behind him. He turned around to see three other cyberzombies lunging toward him. Finger on the trigger, Kihyun fired the first shot.

  
  


The cargo vehicle was what Neo Seoulites referred to as a Smart Car—it could sync with one’s cyberbrain, fully automated to take control of the wheel as the driver rested comfortably and enjoyed the ride. Keys and security features were obsolete, as cyberbrains replaced the necessity for such antiquated technology. This fact proved problematic, as Hyungwon was unenhanced and as such he was unable to hack into it without a cyberbrain. This model was newer than the models he hacked into in Maize’s parking lot.

Using a thin, hard object he scavenged from nearby—something reminiscent of a crowbar—Hyungwon was able to pry open the driver door. Rust compromised the door hinges from years of exposure to extreme deadlands elements. The finish of the car was sun bleached, the tread on the tires was worn thin, and the windshield was shattered in curious fractal patterns. He tinkered with the wiring beneath the heat-warped dashboard, more so studying the configuration than physically tampering with the wires and circuits.

This technology was more intricate than what he was accustomed to repairing, including cybernetic enhancement surgery. The pulsing, cybernetic core of Neo Seoul operated on a technological level beyond Hyungwon’s comprehension; outskirts cybernetics were the antiquated ideas of neophyte Neo Seoul.

This technology wasn’t in that book his mother left him. This was technology was on a level far greater than anything ever imagined by inventors of his mother's time.

What was he going to do? Kihyun was relying on him to figure this out. Hell, he was relying on himself to figure it out. If he didn’t kickstart the vehicle, their death was guaranteed. He was their only salvation.

Their escape was in Hyungwon’s hands.  
  


 

A bullet shot through the oozing eye socket of one cyberzombie and exploded out the back of its skull, lodging shrapnel into everything nearby. If it were human, brain matter would’ve exploded like a messy bomb, but only loose, frayed wires dangled in the circular chasm of the metal skull. The robot fell to the loose sand as viscous, black oil mixed with frothy, purple blood from the bleeding bullet hole wound.

The two cyberzombies that accompanied the fallen bot stood idle, their matte ebony eyes flickering between Kihyun and the bleeding head of their deceased brethren. At some point, Kihyun had been brutally stricken by the very cyberzombie he shot, as evidenced by his throbbing, bruised limb. Murder was his retribution.

Kihyun spat a loogie of reddish-purple blood on the metal corpse before wiping dried blood from his split lip. He then directed his attention to the two skittish bots. "Yeah, motherfucker. Come get some," he smirked and signaled for the bots to attack, provoked by the Purple Hack-induced stimulation roaring in his veins.

It felt good to kill, and it grew sweeter with each death.

One cyberzombie lunged toward him with cat-like agility, something Kihyun didn't immediately recognize as part of such a large bot's build. This undead robot was nothing akin to the driller bot. Perhaps it had been re-programmed or tuned with government level upgrades. Nevertheless, Kihyun reacted quickly, reflexively extending his leg to kick the charging zombie in its hard, metal chest, his sand-caked boot firmly planted in the area a heart would inhabit if his attacker were human. Using all the force reserved in his fatigued body, Kihyun's arms flailed with the power of his exertion. In doing so, he exposed his defenses and unwittingly increased vulnerability; a stupid move he should've outgrew from living off the streets of Neo Seoul. He always was a slow learner.

The second bot blindsided him by weaving around him in an unpredictable zig-zag pattern only to wham a massive, metal fist into Kihyun's unprotected gut. Kihyun lurched forward, clamping with his bloodied hands the immense pain circulating in his core from the unexpected blow. He coughed up blood, the warm fluid splattering across his chapped lips and catching in his palm as he covered his mouth. To his absolute horror, the reddish color was significantly more purple, something eerily similar to the frothing color oozing from the wave of cyberzombies he slayed.

Fuck, he really was infected. Not only was he infected, but the virus was spreading and consuming him; rewiring his very makeup. He was no longer the Kihyun he or Hyungwon knew.

One cyberzombie lunged toward him with cat-like agility, something Kihyun didn't immediately recognize as part of such a large bot's build. This undead robot was nothing akin to the driller bot. Perhaps it had been re-programmed or tuned with government level upgrades. Nevertheless, Kihyun reacted quickly, reflexively extending his leg to kick the charging zombie in its hard, metal chest, his sand-caked boot firmly planted in the area a heart would inhabit if his attacker were human. Using all the force reserved in his fatigued body, Kihyun's arms flailed with the power of his exertion. In doing so, he exposed his defenses and unwittingly increased vulnerability; a stupid move he should've outgrew from living off the streets of Neo Seoul. He always was a slow learner.   
  
The second bot blindsided him by weaving around him in an unpredictable zig-zag pattern only to wham a massive, metal fist into Kihyun's unprotected gut. Kihyun lurched forward, clamping with his bloodied hands the immense pain circulating in his core from the unexpected blow. He coughed up blood, the warm fluid splattering across his chapped lips and catching in his palm as he covered his mouth. To his absolute horror, the reddish color was significantly more purple, something eerily similar to the frothing color oozing from the wave of cyberzombies he slayed.   
  
Fuck, he really was infected. Not only was he infected, but the virus was spreading and consuming him; rewiring his very makeup. He was no longer the Kihyun he or Hyungwon knew.   
  
Then, the two bots attacked in unison, their synchronicity fluid and intimidating. They struck Kihyun in a calculated pattern too tricky for his groggy mind to process. They weren't striking him too hard, but whatever they were doing, it affected his body in strange, nauseatingly painful ways. The pain was so astounding he found himself lightheaded and struggling to stay conscious. He flailed his limbs in a desperate attempt to fend off the attacks, but his coordination lagged and his physical response was sluggish. Could it be that they were warping his physiology? Somehow hyper-stimulating his nerve endings without numbing pain receptors?   
  
Where had he felt that before?   
  
Neo Seoul. Police bots. They were equipped with advanced weaponry not disclosed to the public. To this day, Kihyun had no idea what the weapons were or what they were made of, but he knew their power, their pain. He felt it numerous times during his stint with Proto Choke. Were these bots infected police bots? How'd they get this far out?   
  
Could it be that the government was trafficking their own, too?   
  
Suddenly, one of the robots glitched. Without stimulation from both sides, Kihyun was better able to block out the terrible sensation and gather his wits. When his visual partially returned, he noticed the glitching bot was not frothing purple blood or oozing black tar. The fuck? Were police bots out here by choice? Partaking in violence for kicks? No, impossible. They were machines, too, impervious to the horrid virus that infected cybernetic-kind only.   
  
Kihyun decided against pondering it too much, instead shifting his focus to keeping himself alive. The momentary lapse in offense was fleeting and temporary. He needed to act quickly. Gun in hand, he slid his finger on the trigger and pointed the weapon at the glitching bot. Though his arm shook from whatever stimulation the active bot was inflicting upon him, he pulled the trigger. He missed. Frantically, he pulled the trigger again. It fired a blank. _Fuck._   
  
Within seconds, the glitching bot reset functionality. Resuming its assault, it blitzed toward Kihyun with white electricity sparking from its metal palms. Kihyun fussed with the gun, desperate to dislodged the jammed bullet. In his attempt to do so, the bot who remained functional grabbed him by the throat in its vise-like grip, elevating him off the ground by his weak, vulnerable throat. Kihyun coughed until airflow was too insufficient to allow even meager choking noises. His hands pried at the offending grasp, eyes almost popping from his skull, neck veins bulging and pulsating underneath artificial hands.   
  
Last ounce of life in him, Kihyun's fight or flight response jolted through him like a defibrillator, provoking his limbs to act promptly but sloppily. He pointed the gun at the robot strangling him, hands too shaky to steady his aim but finger not failing to pull the trigger. A bullet flew out  and missed the bot's head entirely, yet the death grip on his neck ceased. Kihyun plummeted to the ground coughing and gasping for air. A second after he fell, he was joined by the very bot he just attempted to murder. The bullet missed it's head, but pierced the power supply in its neck. White electricity and purple liquid spurt from the hole with great pressure, bathing Kihyun in the warmth and foul odor.   
  
The police robots were infected after all. Knowing that comforted him.   
  
The other bot snagged Kihyun by the back of his jacket and plucked him up from the ground with ease. Acting purely out of reflex, Kihyun jammed the barrel of his gun in the crazed bot's mouth so far his knuckles collided with the cyberzombie's sharp teeth, the tiny metal tips piercing his soft human flesh so easily the bot's eyes lit up in pleasure as rich human blood sated its undead cravings. Gritting his teeth, Kihyun pulled the trigger without hesitation, a smoking bullet blowing out the back of the zombie's metal skull just like the last two bots he slaughtered.   
  
This time, however, its jaw clamped shut upon death, trapping Kihyun's hand in its pointy, metal cage. Kihyun shook his hand roughly, shaking the deceased bot off to the best of his ability, but not without a cost—piping hot bile erupted from the bot's throat and spewed out its mouth like a volcano, dripping down Kihyun’s human arm and searing the skin so badly it sizzled with each progressing inch. Scorching droplets burned holes through his clothing, his chest, eroding the synthetic flesh cloaking his cybernetic arm. Metal and wires and tendrils and tendons exposed but impervious to the corrosive heat of viral cyberzombie blood.

As Kihyun finally pried the zombie bot off his arm, purple blood singeing all in its wake, he smartly grabbed the limp carcass and used it as a body shield from any offending attack. Wielding one of their own as both a weapon and a shield, Kihyun cast an intimidating presence to any other cyberzombies who dared challenge him. They tried, though, to bring him down in the worst ways, charging at him in unison, strategically flanking him, blindsiding him, and otherwise assaulting him with their superior artificial strength and agility.

Just as Kihyun was surrounded by a swarm of six or more frothing undead, he heard the loud, distinct hum of a car engine. _Hyungwon._ In his peripherals, Kihyun caught a glimpse of the Neo Seoul smart car Hyungwon was tasked to hack. _The motherfucker did it!_ How the fuck did he manage?

The vehicle swerved uncontrollably in the thick, loose deadlands sand, as Hyungwon was certainly not trained to operate a vehicle, but somehow he prevailed by maneuvering the car directly toward Kihyun and the six bloodthirsty zombies. Accelerating at breakneck speed, tires flinging sand, the vehicle narrowly dodged Kihyun and managed to plow through the undead horde in almost one take. Sharply Hyungwon turned the wheel and swerved the car dramatically, tires skidding across loose rifts of sand and drifting toward any cyberzombies still standing by knocking them out in one, all-encompassing sweep. He nearly clipped Kihyun in the process, but Kihyun leapt out of the way last minute; he slid in the sand face-first, adding injury to his weak muscles and bones.

"Get in!" Hyungwon shouted from the crack in the driver's side window and motioned to the passenger side with the point of his chin. The hum of the engine was neither steady nor pretty, but it was the best he could do with his limited knowledge.

Kihyun scrambled to his feet, nearly falling in the process but nonetheless scraping together any last willpower he still possessed by yanking open the passenger door and hurling himself inside it. The rusted door didn’t close properly, but a functioning door was the least of his concerns.

“You almost fucking _killed_ me!” Kihyun panted as he melted into the passenger seat, clearly too stricken to continue his momentum after having nearly been ran over by his best friend. His chest billowed as he sucked air rather than sand into his dry lungs and coughed up sand particles and purple blood clots. Fuck, it was only a matter of time…

Hyungwon scoffed. _“You_ almost killed you!”

“Oh shit, look!” Kihyun shouted, pointing at the tall, vast wall of cyberzombies emerging from the massive sandcloud the vehicle created. Apparently he only battled the few frontrunners, but this was the entire horde. Slipping down into the leather car seat, his trembling fingers pulled down the clip to assess how many bullets he had remaining. One, maybe two. Somewhere along their short departure from the Mecha Market, they abandoned their bag of ammunition. He had one, maybe two shots left. No other chances. Two bullets, at best, weren’t going thwart a massive horde of undead.

Kihyun cackled, clearly hysterical, and flashed Hyungwon a look. “Only two. Better make ‘em count, right?”

Huh? Hyungwon narrowed his eyes. “Dammit Kihyun! What—”

 _“Drive!”_ Kihyun shouted. He shot up from his seat and hurled himself out the flapping, rusted door of the moving vehicle. Hand tightly gripping the interior handle, he stabilized himself as he aimed, tried to hold steady, and fired the first bullet.

The loud noise startled Hyungwon. His heart practically jumped from his chest as it adopted a harsh, drumlike rhythm that was more distracting than the fact that Kihyun, the man he confessed his love to, was hanging out the side of a vehicle he hacked into shooting at a wall of cybernetic zombies in the middle of fucking nowhere. The second shot was fired, for some reason not as loud as the first, and Hyungwon finally understood he was equally part of their escape. In fact, he was probably far more crucial to their survival than Kihyun’s two desperate bullets.

Slamming his foot on the acceleration pedal, Hyungwon drove away from the approaching zombies with no plans to look back. Only moving forward, he and Kihyun couldn't suffer anymore, right? They could drive north in this beat-up, rustbucket of a vehicle and find salvation. Kihyun could get cured. Life could be better than their days of squalor in the outskirts.

All he had to do was keep driving.

Away. Further. Faster.

But an escape was only an escape.

It was a band-aid fix to a permanent problem. A virus so infectious, so fatal that it wiped out Neo Seoul surely spread to other Neo cities and did the same. Resurrection, destruction, resurrection, destruction—the inevitable endless cycle. Years of reconstruction after the Cyber War lead to downfall from designs previously coveted and praised. No matter how infallible humankind attempted to make themselves, the farther they were from achieving invincibility.

They created their own end.

 _Fuck that._ No matter how far they drove, the cyberzombies would chase them until their mortal coil claimed them. Driving away was a compliant escape. Driving away was complacency. Driving into the danger and approaching problems head-on, however, was a noble escape. Hyungwon was done being the complacent robot repair technician who lived a modest life in a shitty place. He was going to save them both so they could live happily ever after.

Hyungwon slammed the brake pedal, causing the car to skid and skip over the firm rifts of sand packed into the deadlands earth. Kihyun tumbled into the vehicle and crashed onto the warped dashboard from the sudden shift in momentum. He whacked his head on the gearshift as he rolled off the dashboard before collapsing onto the floorboard of the passenger seat.

“What the fuck?” Kihyun yelled, hands gripping the torn leather of the seat in front of him so he wouldn’t fall out of the speeding car.

Hyungwon whirled the car around swiftly. The nose of the vehicle faced the rapidly approaching horde of undead. He reset the gearshift with a firm, confident grip. “I’m going to drive into them.”

 _“What the fuck?”_ Kihyun reiterated, this time with panic laced in his tone.

“Grab onto something,” Hyungwon demanded as he mashed the accelerator to the floorboard. He gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles blanched white. His heart still drummed steadily in his chest, but he felt at peace with his decision. He felt in control.

Kihyun rapidly collected himself and climbed on the passenger seat, his back flat against the leather seat to sate his body’s desire to be protected by something immovable. He instinctively grabbed the bottom of the seat to stabilize himself. “We need this car, Hyungwon. Don’t be stupid.”

“We’re never going to get rid of them if we don’t do something.”

Acceleration quickened.

Kihyun furrowed his brows trying to rationalize Hyungwon’s words. “How are we gonna get north?”

“Ah,” Hyungwon grinned, turning to look at Kihyun. “So you _do_ believe the north exists?”

Acceleration at maximum speed.  

“Fuck you, Hyungw—”

It happened so quickly no one would ever be able to discern it was a plan, if there was ever anyone still alive to be able to discern anything that happened during the Purple Hack.

The collision was intense, the outdated Neo Seoul smart car crashing into hundreds of bloodthirsty cybernetic zombies. Pieces of metal exploded like the colorful confetti from a shiny, technological blimp on Neo Seoul’s grand reopening day. The collision was so calamitous a massive blue fire ignited immediately upon impact, white-hot as heatwaves rolled over the sandy wasteland. The undead that failed to die from impact melted into puddles of metal and sticky, bubbling tar.

Two trails of disrupted sand leading away from the crash dropped off into a steep, sandy valley. Concealed in the dense clay-like sand of deep deadlands dunes, two bodies caked in blood lay motionless and barely breathing.

_But goddammit, they were alive._


End file.
